Reinventing at 61: How I’m Betting on Myself in 2026 (Without the January Pressure)

How I’m Betting on Myself in 2026 (Without the January Pressure)

As a new year begins, many of us feel the pressure to rush into resolutions, big goals, and nonstop productivity. In this short solo episode of Reinvention Rebels, I’m sharing a different approach to starting the year — one rooted in listening, intention, and self-trust, especially in midlife.

Rather than pushing for momentum or perfection, I reflect on how I’m betting on myself in 2026 in a way that feels quieter, more compassionate, and more sustainable. I share how shifting away from all-or-nothing thinking around diet and exercise, protecting my energy, and allowing clarity to unfold over time has changed the way I approach growth and reinvention.

If January feels louder or more demanding than you expected, this episode offers permission to slow down, tune in, and trust your own timing.

In this episode, I share:

✨ Why January pressure often leads to burnout instead of lasting change
🌀 How all-or-nothing thinking kept me stuck and what helped me move forward
💛 What betting on myself in midlife looks like now, at 61
🌱 Why consistency works better than perfection
🧭 How I’m approaching 2026 with intention instead of urgency
👂 Why listening before deciding can be a powerful form of self-trust

Reflection questions to consider:

❓ Where might you be rushing yourself right now?
❓ What’s one area where a softer, more sustainable approach might serve you better?
❓ What would betting on yourself look like if it didn’t involve pressure?

Podcast shoutout:

I’m also giving a shoutout to my friend Suzy Rosenstein, host of the podcast Women in the Middle. If you enjoy thoughtful conversations about midlife, reinvention, and navigating life with intention and curiosity, I know you’ll love her show.

Later this month, I’ll be back with another short solo episode focused on permission — and what it really looks like to give ourselves permission to try again, especially in midlife.

Thanks for listening and for being part of the Reinvention Rebels community.

PS: If this episode inspired you, and you’d like even more gentle inspiration, I invite to download my free gift, 100 Ways to Reinvent Yourself in Midlife. It's filled with ideas to spark curiosity and help you imagine what your next great adventure could look like. 

Transcript

Hey, hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Reinvention Rebels podcast. Happy 2026. I'm so happy you're here. I'm your host, Wendy. And if you are a first-time listener, welcome to the Reinvention Rebels Community. This is a place where we illuminate, elevate, celebrate mid-life women and beyond. Who are reinventing in the most interesting, bold, playful, remarkable ways. And I'm just really happy that you're here. And if you are a regular, welcome back. I hope you are ready to ease into a fantastic year.

I'm really excited because, you know, it's the new year and there's all this New Year. Energy. And I always feel like it's a lot of hope and possibility on my end, but often mixed with this level of pressure, like, am I going to get it done? What am I going to do? How am I going to do it? By when am I going to do it? I often start off the year that way, and this year I'm trying to take a step back and be a little mindful about it.

So you probably remember, for those of you that are regulars, that We are in the midst of season seven of the Reinvention Rebels podcast, and the theme for this season is how I bet on myself and never look back. How I bet on myself and never looked back. And I want to play with that idea in this relatively short solo episode today, because I know when the new year starts, at least for me, I tend to go all out, as I know many of us do, with all these big goals or resolutions and all the things we want to get done. But that's not what this episode is about. It's not a resolutions episode about listing all the things I plan to do. It's also not a productivity push because I feel like I've been wired for so many years to be all about getting things done, especially at the start of the new year.

So this episode is really a reflection on how you're choosing to bet on yourself now. So totally different than like my all out laundry list of all the things I want to get done. For me this year, betting on myself looks quieter, it looks more intentional and honestly, I think it's more sustainable than it has ever been. New Year, different approach.

I want to start this off by asking you some questions. How many of you feel that pressure in January to snap into action immediately? New goals, new plans, new habits, trying to do it all at once. And how many of you have ever experienced the opposite. You start off strong and then things peter out in ways you didn't expect. And what if the issue isn't motivation but how you're actually approaching the changes that you want to make? And what if nothing is wrong with you? What if the issue isn't motivation but how you're approaching change?

So I want to share an example about this because it gets to the heart of what I mean about perhaps seeing the new year through a different, more mindful, intentional lens. It's not about go, go, go. Because in the past, I have been focused on diet and exercise. You know, I pretty much ate my way through the holidays and then was like, I gotta do something about this. I have to do something about my stomach. I don't like how things are looking or how i'm feeling. You know, all those things would run through my head, so.

What would happen is that I'd start off January with a lot of rules. It might be I was going to do a cleanse. It might be I'm not going to eat certain things. It might be I'm going to only focus on certain things, but it tended to be very restrictive. It tended to be very all or nothing. And I usually had that, well, this time is going to be different kind of energy. But it actually really wasn't. It wasn't different because I would fall into the same pattern of trying to do it perfectly, trying to dot all the I's and cross all the T's in my fresh start. And as a result, I was very rigid about how I did things. I didn't allow for a lot of compromise. And, you know, I thought that was okay. I don't want to say it was white knuckling it, but. You know, when I come up with an idea and I wanna do something, I wanna go all out doing it. So I honestly put a lot of pressure on myself and it wasn't helpful because as I know you know, and I'm sure you have experienced, whether it's with diet and exercise or some other part of your life, I fell off the wagon.

And we know what that feeling is like when we fall off the wagon because then, you know, we don't feel good about ourselves, we can feel discouraged, we can get that like, why should I even bother anymore kind of attitude, or it feels like a lot of effort to try to get back on quote unquote the wagon. So it left me feeling very frustrated, like that's not what I wanted. The thing I've come to know is that this problem wasn't about my willpower. It was really about the way I was trying to force change. Like that just doesn't work for me. And it took me a a lot of years, 61 years, basically, to figure out that that doesn't work for me. And I know ultimately we all have to figure out what works for each of us.

So I have to contrast, you know, my, my years past with what's working for me now. And what I have realized that it is possible to make these changes when we can find a way to make it work. So it wasn't in having these grandiose resolutions that certainly didn't work, but I really have found a way with diet and exercise to make it work with my body and definitely not against it and to do it in a way that's sustainable because that's it for me. I have to figure out how to make something work long term that is more about consistency and it's not about being perfect in every way.

You might have heard me talk about this for those of you that follow me on Instagram, you've seen some of my posts about it, but I started this program that was all about making small and sustainable changes. And what's really different for me is that for today is, I think, day 345. For 345 days, almost one full year, I've exercised every single day with intention and purpose, but in a manageable way. It's not for more than half an hour. I basically just follow these videos so I know exactly what to do, and I've gotten so much stronger. I feel so much better. I have so much more energy. I feel so much better in my body.

But it's not just my exercise, which for me has been literally, I still can't believe that I've been able to exercise for that many days in a row. And. And all kinds of exercise, too. Not just cardio, but doing that, doing strength training consistently, doing recovery days, like with Pilates and yoga. So really having this nice balanced? Well, that has been number one, a game changer for me. But again, it wasn't about a resolution. It was about just trying to have this idea of finding my own way through this to be more consistent in a way that works for me.

And it's been the same thing with eating healthfully that, you know, at least 80% of the time, if not more, I've been following some general guidelines, not so strict as I've done in the past, like, you gotta do this, but just kind of going with the flow, leaning in, you know, sensing what feels right for my body and being able to really follow through in that way. And that has made such a difference. So it didn't come with this sense of urgency and pushing myself so steadily. They came with more allowing and finding something that worked for me.

And then once I found something that worked, continuing with that, it's not like I started out with this idea, I'm gonna. I'm gonna exercise, like, every day for a year. That wasn't my goal at all. It was just to get healthier. But I will tell you that once I got started on doing the exercise and started to feel better and more energetic, I was motivated and that motivation kept me going. And in fact, there was even a time last year I was on a trip for work. I was in San Francisco. I had to get up super early to leave for my flight. It was a 7:00 a.m. flight back to the East Coast. And I actually set my alarm early to go get my workout in before I left because my pickup for the airport was at 3:45 in the morning. So I was in the gym at 2:30 doing my half an hour workout because I didn't want to break my streak because I knew by the time I got home it was going to be late. So once I found a rhythm and I found motivation it was much easier for me to keep going.

So what's that thing you might want to do this year that you can think mindfully about that you can find a way to do without so much pressure? It doesn't have to be some huge thing that you'll be some huge thing that you'll feel disappointed if you don't do it, but that you can find a way to make it happen. For me, honestly, it came from listening to myself, getting more quiet, it came from experimenting and honestly adjusting as I went that my diet didn't have to be again so prescribed that I could find my way.

So that shift taught me something bigger, which is that betting on myself doesn't mean being stricter. It means being smarter and definitely more compassionate. It's having that self-compassion that for me in the past was definitely lacking. It was that feeling of being so hard on myself. And maybe that's age and wisdom. I've just learned that I don't need to be so hard on myself to make progress.

I want to talk a little bit about how I'm betting on myself in 2026 and I hope this will spark the same conversation with you to think about what are some ways you can bet on yourself that aren't these stringent goals that can help you move forward in ways that inspire you, that uplift you, that motivate you to want to keep going. Number one, betting on myself means trusting my timing. And what does that look like for me in 2026? Well, it looks like taking a step back to do some planning. And in this case, it's planning about the podcast and my strategy for the year, what feels right, and really being open to and allowing clarity.

I usually am like, okay, heads down, let me figure it out, let me have it again all perfectly aligned and ready. So I put a lot of pressure on myself. And this year, it's taking my foot off the gas. And being open to what could be and making that room for decisions to unfold that I don't have to know everything right now in the first week or two or the first month even, but that I can do some more mindful, gentle planning with less pressure. And honestly, I've learned that Clarity often comes after I've given myself space. That's number one.

Number two, betting on myself means protecting my energy. So with regard to the podcast, for me, this year that means less guest episodes because it takes me a lot more time to produce those episodes and because I have a full-time job, I don't have a lot of time. So I'm thinking about what's the best way I can manage my energy and that approach is gonna be a little different than it was last year. So betting on myself looks a little different in 2026.

Definitely more self-compassion I'm creating space to work on my website. I'm creating space for the strategy work and also inviting in aligned collaborations with the work I'm doing with midlife women. And one of them, for example, is I'm collaborating with a stylist, someone who helps women reimagine their style. And I just thought, I like this idea, just giving myself a little allowing things to bubble up, seeing what there are new opportunities without so much pressure is a game changer for me and is going to help me. I can feel already manage my energy more effectively. I'm trying to no longer better myself in ways that ultimately cost me myself with stress and pressure. So being gentle, that's a change for me. So I like this idea.

And then finally, number three, betting on myself means leading with intention. I love that word intention because in the past, quite frankly, ideas will come up and I'd be like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. Or someone would approach me with something and I'd immediately jump on it and not step back and think about, does this align with what's important to me? Does this help me manage my energy and honor myself? I would just jump full force into it and there's something to be said for stepping back.

So I am trying to say yes more deliberately this year. And I also, I'm trying to find this synergy between the things I'm doing. I'm trying to figure out how I can let projects really support each other, how they're really all connected, how I can help those things unfold with intention. And in the past, I've tried to make things seem so urgent. Well, they were only urgent in my head, honestly. They weren't urgent like someone's telling me, this is urgent. I mean, it's my own podcast. It's my own speaking. So I would put a lot of pressure on myself. And this idea of choosing integration over urgency is something that's really important to me. So that's the third thing, betting on myself with clear intention in 2026. So this year, I'm not so much betting on momentum as betting on alignment.

I want you to noodle on this and see how this lands with you. So amazing rebels, now that I've shared a little bit about what I'm thinking about for 2026, I'd love for you to have the same conversation for yourself. What does that look like and how are you betting on yourself this year? I want to encourage you to do that by posing a few questions that I hope that you'll noodle on. So number one, where might you be rushing yourself right now? At the start of the year you might already be thinking, I've got to hurry and do this and do that. What are those areas where you're doing that? Number two, where's one area where a softer, more sustainable approach might serve you better? What might that be? Number three, what would betting on yourself look like if it didn't involve pressure. What would that look and feel like?

I'd really love to know. And here's the thing, you don't need this whole plan today. These are questions to get you thinking and to get out of the I'm gonna have all these resolutions kind of plan to the air and a more mindful intentional plan that's really focused on betting on yourself. You know what I love about all this? You don't need permission from anybody else. To think about it this way, you just need permission to listen to yourself. Those answers, y'all, are in there.

As I wrap up this first episode of the year, that's all about how we can bet on ourselves in ways that work for us, I just want to remind you, reinvention, whatever that looks like for you in 2026, It's not about speed. It's about listening, intention, and truly tuning in. And I gotta say, I'm so excited about the year ahead for me and for you. I'm excited to see what unfolds for you. I'm excited to see how you perhaps go a little slower, how you find a groove that works for you that's not falling off after the first month or a couple of months, you start out of the gate strong, and then you peter out. That's what I'm trying to avoid. And I hope you will too. I hope you will think about how you could have a joyful, inspiring, I'm living my best life year on your terms.

Before we go, I do want to give a shout out to one of my friends, Susie Rosenstein, who is a fellow podcaster over 50. She's got an amazing podcast called Women in the Middle. And because you love this podcast, I know you're also going to love her podcast. She has a great mix of guest and solo episodes. It's a great way to get your year started with some more inspiration as you lean into this year of betting on yourself and not looking back. I've got the details in the show notes. Please check it out. I know you will love it too.

And later this month, I'll be back with another short solo episode about permission. That is one of my favorite topics, permission, and what it looks like to give ourselves permission to try again and again and to go for it. And I hope that we all do that in 2026.

All right, Rebels, thanks so much for tuning in and joining me today. I'll be back in your earbuds in just a couple of weeks and Until next time, keep shining your light. The world needs you and all that you have to offer.